Book review Human Remains Dissection and its Histories.

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AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 136:242–246 (2008)
Book Reviews
HUMAN REMAINS: DISSECTION AND ITS HISTORIES. By Helen
MacDonald. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
2006. 224 pp. ISBN 0-300-11699-3. $35.00 (cloth).
Human anatomy has a complex and controversial
past. From its beginnings, dissection has existed in various permutations of science, art, ritual, punishment,
and, most recently, traveling museum displays. Helen
MacDonald (The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne) takes a different perspective than previous
authors who have explored the history of anatomy and
offers her view on the cultural history of dissection. She
advocates a social understanding of dissection through
narratives of the individuals involved, the dissectors
and the dissected, as well as the sociocultural connections between them. The book, aimed at popular as well
as academic audiences, comprises a set of interwoven
stories about how tangible, living people came to be
subjects for dissection. Through these ‘‘histories,’’
MacDonald attempts to provide insight into the role of
19th-century anatomy in shaping and reﬂecting the
attitudes of doctors and scientists towards death and
dead bodies, evolution, and the cultures of indigenous
peoples.
The introductory chapter begins with a description of
Gunther von Hagens’s public dissection of a human body
in November 2002. This lays the groundwork for the
author’s thesis that dissection includes ‘‘performative’’
aspects that are extraneous to its scientiﬁc merit (p 9),
and has thus fostered an environment in which human
remains may be treated unethically. Chapter 1 describes
the practice of anatomy in London prior to the passage
of the Anatomy Act in 1832. MacDonald recounts that
during this time convicted murderers received the dual
sentence of death and public dissection, the poor who
died in hospitals were routinely given to surgeons for
anatomical study, and scientists commonly traded in
human remains. She presents ample evidence that public dissections were spectacles of social power, while the
scientiﬁc study of anatomy was carried out privately and
usually illegally.
In Chapter 2, MacDonald explores the relationships
between dissection, gender, and class through a rich
illustration of the life, death, and dissection of Mary
McLauchlan, a woman transported from Scotland to
the penal colony in Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s
Land). MacLauchlan’s story is enhanced by comparisons between British anatomy and practices in Tasmania, providing glimpses into the sociocultural contexts
of medical and governmental establishments at the
time.
Chapter 3 shifts from a discussion of crime and its
punishment to the scientiﬁc study of race as a way of
gaining access to the dead. At the time of McLauchlan’s
hanging, relations between colonists and Tasmanian
Aborigines was the foremost social issue. The information MacDonald provides in this chapter is more than
descriptive background for the remainder of the book,
as racialized cadavers were used to provide evidence for
scientiﬁc theories of the time. Medical doctors, who
C 2008
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WILEY-LISS, INC.
were often self-taught physical anthropologists, collected human bones of all kinds, but especially those of
diminishing aboriginal populations, to be used as evidence to support either monogenic or polygenic theories
of human origins.
Chapter 4 provides an absorbing account of the principal bone collectors in both Britain and Tasmania. Among
others, she describes Joseph Barnard Davis, a British
physician and disciple of American physician and early
physical anthropologist Samuel Morton. The lives of colonial physicians such as William Crowther are also illustrated in detail. MacDonald skillfully interweaves the
racial theories of Davis, the corpse-gathering activities of
Crowther, and the implications of these activities for the
social relations between colonists and natives. In Chapter 5, this theme is developed most fully as MacDonald
analyzes the 1869 scandal surrounding the death of William Lanney. As the last Tasmanian Aboriginal man,
Lanney’s death turned him into a desirable collector’s
item. This began an international struggle for his
remains, resulting in the theft of his skull by the Tasmanian Royal Society.
MacDonald concludes in the ﬁnal chapter by drawing
analogies to more recent examples of unethical treatment of the dead, notably at Bristol Royal Inﬁrmary and
at Alder Hey in Liverpool. She argues that ‘‘medicine’s
past suffuses its present’’ (p 186). MacDonald thus
returns to her original thesis that a culture of dissection
has been created in which ‘‘privileged access to the dead
is continually abused’’ (p 186). She argues that only by
understanding this cultural history can we prevent such
attitudes in the present.
I have several criticisms of this text. Throughout the
book, MacDonald takes liberties with her writing style,
and overemphasizes her own viewpoint. For example,
most of her histories are set in 19th century England
and Australia, but her interjections are often formulated
in the present tense, mixing the past and the present to
support her thesis. She is exasperatingly speculative,
and I found this style both distracting and somewhat
indulgent.
MacDonald’s book is different than many previous
histories because she attempts to take the perspective of the cadaver. In doing so, she objects to
the ‘‘anonymization’’ of cadavers for dissection as
‘‘turning human beings into things for surgeons’’
(p 9). This is an oversimpliﬁcation of a complex
issue. MacDonald is correct in stating that human
dissection anonymizes the bodies, but it does not
dehumanize them. For example, most medical schools
conduct memorial services in honor of the dead used
for teaching anatomy. Such ceremonies emphasize
the underlying perception of the human body as
being borrowed for the sake of science and medicine,
but ultimately the body is returned to the humane
sphere. The distinction between anonymization and
dehumanization, not espoused by MacDonald in her
book, is relevant to medical education because it balances objective, evidence-based conceptualizations of
the body with compassionate, and personal clinical
attitudes.
Since virtually every known human society has
well established traditions of disposing of the dead
rather than using them, it is difﬁcult to construct a
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BOOK REVIEWS
theory of ethics with regard to the use of human
cadavers. Human Remains is far from offering a
comprehensive evaluation of the ethics of anatomy.
However, MacDonald succeeds in challenging us in
different ways. She focuses on the cultural history of
dissection and, although heavy handed at times,
forces readers to ask similar questions in a contemporary framework. In summary, Human Remains
presents an intriguing history that will be thought
provoking for anyone involved in the study or teaching of human anatomy.
MAPPING OUR ANCESTORS: PHYLOGENETIC APPROACHES IN
ANTHROPOLOGY AND PREHISTORY. By Carl P. Lipo, Michael
J. O’Brien, Mark Collard, and Stephen J. Shennan.
New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. 2006. 353 pp.
ISBN 0-202-30751-4. $29.95 (paper).
A quick glance at the title of this book might suggest
that this is a text on how to perform cladistic analysis,
particularly in paleoanthropology. This assumption
would only be correct in part and would miss a major
feature of the book. Although the book does deal with
phylogenetic analysis, with primary emphasis on cladistic methods, it is not concerned directly with evolutionary biology. Instead, the focus is on examining the
applicability of phylogenetic methods to a variety of data
across the subdisciplines of anthropology in order to
reconstruct cultural history. How do cultures change
over time? What impact does cultural contact have? How
can we reconstruct the cultural evolutionary dynamics of
a society? These (and other) questions are being asked
by anthropologists, and this book provides examples of
how phylogenetic analysis can help answer them.
This book had its origin in two symposia that took place
at the 2003 annual meeting of the Society for American
Archaeology. It is thus not surprising that many of the contributions focus on the application of phylogenetic analysis
to archaeological data, although other chapters also look at
ethnographic, linguistic, and bioarchaeological data in phylogenetic studies of culture history and evolution. Studies
of cultural history are based on the idea that both biology
and culture are inherited from our ancestors. As with traditional cladistic analysis in evolutionary biology, there is
concern with identifying the different causes of population
afﬁnity and the consequent need to partition relationships,
be they cultural or biological, into those reﬂecting homology versus homoplasy. A cultural trait, for example, can be
inherited from one’s ancestors or can reﬂect independent
invention or the blending of cultures. As with biological
data, simply considering overall similarity without regard
to cause can result in a distorted view of evolutionary relationships (e.g., a focus on shared primitive traits would not
tell us anything about evolutionary relationships).
The book consists of six major parts. Part I is an introductory essay by the editors pointing to the need for a
phylogenetic approach to cultural data in order to
address questions of cultural evolution and a short review
of similarities and differences between cultural and biological phylogenetic analysis. I often ﬁnd discussions comparing biological and cultural evolution difﬁcult and/or
too abstract to follow, but that was not the case here. The
authors make their points clearly and with useful exam-
KATHLEEN M. MULDOON
Department of Anatomy
Dartmouth Medical School and
Department of Anthropology
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire
DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20786
Published online 10 January 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com).
ples that are easy to follow. I particularly enjoyed Collard
and colleagues’ chapter comparing branching and blending modes in cultural evolution, and their ﬁnding that
blending of cultures (e.g., through trade) has not had as
great an impact on cultural change as is often thought
and that a branching model often ﬁts the data better.
Part II contains six chapters concerned with basic questions and methods ranging from the fundamental nature
of a culturally transmitted unit of inheritance and quantiﬁcation of cultural relatedness to papers dealing with the
relationship of phylogenetic analysis to seriation and
graph theory. Although these chapters often contain speciﬁc case studies for illustration of basic points, the next
three parts of the book focus more on speciﬁc examples of
cultural history. Part III is labeled ‘‘Biology,’’ but this term
is a bit broad (‘‘Bioarchaeology’’ would be more descriptive). The two chapters here are actually more narrowly
focused on using data from skeletal biology to address
archaeological issues. Part IV consists of ﬁve chapters
dealing with the application of phylogenetics to ‘‘Culture’’
and gives examples using data from lithics, ceramics, and,
in the case of a chapter by Jordan and Mace, a synthesis
based on material culture, social practices, and linguistics
among Northwest Coast indigenous groups. Part V consists of two chapters focusing on linguistic relations: one,
an analysis of the spread of Bantu languages in Africa;
the other, a more general discussion of linguistic evolution
using the origins of Indo–European languages as an
example. Part VI is a short afterword by the authors.
As with any edited volume, the focus, length, and style of
individual contributions vary from chapter to chapter. I did
ﬁnd, however, that pretty much the entire book was readable and accessible to someone like me who is not that
versed in the speciﬁc archaeological and linguistic controversies, or phylogenetic analysis for that matter. The main
thrust of the book, to illustrate how phylogenetic methods
can be used to investigate human history using a variety of
data, came through clearly throughout the book. Any fears I
might have had about the potential problems of inappropriately applying biological evolutionary models to cultural
data disappeared during reading. The authors were all very
clear about where and how phylogenetic methods could be
applied to cultural data. These were carefully thought-out
arguments and not wild and inappropriate analogies. The
differences between biological and cultural transmission
and evolution—e.g., cultural transmission must allow for
blending as well as branching, the subject of an entire chapter in Part II—were always clear and not brushed aside.
I found the book particularly useful in showing me
how practitioners in different subﬁelds are often wrestling with similar questions, and sometimes even similar
methods, to those in biological anthropology. Although I
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
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BOOK REVIEWS
have always advocated the holistic ideal of anthropology,
in practice it has often been difﬁcult to point to speciﬁc
examples of interests that cut across different subﬁelds,
particularly in recent decades. This book made me feel a
little more optimistic, in large part because it played to
my own predilection for deﬁning anthropology as the history and geography of the human species in both biological and cultural dimensions. Others will, of course, have
a different view of what anthropology is, or should be,
but a concern for history and ancestor-descendant relationships does give us all at least one starting point for
continued dialogue across the subdisciplines.
PRIMATES IN PERSPECTIVE. Edited by Christina J.
Campbell, Agustı́n Fuentes, Katherine C. MacKinnon,
Melissa Panger, and Simon K. Bearder. New York:
Oxford University Press. 2007. 720 pp. ISBN 0-19517133-0. $52.95 (paper).
In 1987 Primate Societies (edited by Barbara Smuts
and colleagues) was published. It became one of the
most treasured books of many a budding primatologist,
as well as a rich source of information for those already
established. The book contained an outstanding volume
of information on living primates. It also showed where
our knowledge was incomplete or lacking, providing inspiration and incentive for further research. Now twenty
years later we are treated with a sequel, Primates in
Perspective. This book stands in evidence that primatologists have not been idle over the intervening years and
attests to the amazing quantity of new information that
has been added to the ﬁeld. It is especially encouraging
to see the great amount we now have on species previously more or less unknown, especially nocturnal strepsirrhine primates.
The list of contributing authors, all experts within the
ﬁeld, is long (n ¼ 58). With so many contributors and so
much to present, chaos could have ensued; however, the
editors have done a remarkable job in structuring the
presentation. Even though the contributors follow a template, which provides uniformity, there is allowance for
ﬂexibility as dictated by the topic or the contributor’s
personal style.
The book begins with two chapters that present a historical perspective on primate ﬁeld studies and a synopsis of primate evolutionary history. The remainder is divided into ﬁve sections. The largest, close to half of the
book, is devoted to 17 chapters where vital statistics on
speciﬁc primate groups are provided. Other sections pertain to topics such as reproduction and life history, ecology, and social behavior and intelligence. There is also a
section, comprising three chapters, devoted to methods.
The section ‘‘The Primates’’ is an impressive synthesis of
quantitative information. Each chapter is laden with
tables containing a remarkable array of data, and each
contains detailed lists of species’ distributions, habitat
preferences, population density and group size, and
range size. Especially useful is the inclusion of information on all populations studied, clearly showing the
extent of intraspeciﬁc variability. Most chapters provide
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
JOHN H. RELETHFORD
Department of Anthropology
State University of New York
College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York
DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20787
Published online 10 January 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com).
detailed information on diet and activity budgets; the
species’ physical characteristics; and life history parameters and reproductive behavior. Beyond data, what will
make these chapters invaluable to students are the
extensive citations in each table. This is especially pertinent in the tables listing all ﬁeld studies conducted on
each species.
The ‘‘Methods’’ section is a welcome addition to this
book. It will be especially useful to beginning graduate
students planning research projects. The chapter
‘‘Research Questions’’ is particularly valuable, covering
basic but important topics such as how to design a
research project, how to collect different kinds of data,
and how to analyze these data. The remaining chapters
cover endocrinology and biomolecular primatology and
reveal new approaches now commonly used to address
questions pertaining to reproductive cycles, stress levels,
paternity and kin relationships, and tracking infectious
diseases. The chapter on molecular primatology addresses the biomolecules studied, the methods used, and
the utility of this approach to elucidating a range of
questions pertaining to primates. It considers both laboratory and ﬁeld conditions and is accompanied by excellent illustrations as well as extensive references. The
section ‘‘Reproduction’’ contains ﬁve chapters. The ﬁrst
is a brief overview of the theoretical framework for and
historical background of life-history study, which goes on
to discuss variation in life history patterns among primates. The second is a synopsis of what we know about
growth and development in primates. The next three
chapters pertain to sexuality and reproduction, which is
covered in its physical, behavioral, and endocrinological
manifestations. A special focus is given to reproductive
cessation in female primates and whether menopause is
an exclusively human phenomenon. The potential adaptive value of postreproductive females is also discussed.
The last chapter explores different expressions of mate
choice, with a special focus on female choice and levels
of competition. It considers the potential explanatory
power of female choice on discrepancies between grouping pattern and mating system, a topic that is discussed
further in the social behavior section.
‘‘Ecology’’ comprises six chapters that cover a wide
range of topics. The ﬁrst charts how the ﬁeld of socioecology has evolved over the years and points out
ongoing problems: e.g., we are still attempting to place
arguments in dichotomous categories, which seldom give
a satisfactory result. A chapter on primate feeding ecol-
245
BOOK REVIEWS
ogy focuses on the nutritional requirements of extant
species and the possible evolutionary trajectory of diet
adaptations. Primate positional behavior is discussed in
a chapter that includes informative tables detailing, for
select species, how often speciﬁc substrates are used during different locomotor modes. Another chapter considers
the potentially important role of primates as seed-dispersal agents. Two chapters deal with primate survival. In
one, the evidence for primates as prey is considered. A
table lists published accounts of observed predation
events, and indirect evidence, such as antipredator
behaviors, is discussed. Though humans have preyed
upon primates for millennia, the hunting of primates for
food has now reached crisis proportions. The fact that
primates prey upon each other (e.g., chimpanzees hunting red colobus) and may even cause local populations to
go extinct is also discussed. The chapter on conservation
is dire reading: close to one-third of all primate species
are endangered, many being on the brink of extinction.
The take-home message is that we all need to become
more proactive in protecting extant primate species. To
ensure that future generations have the opportunity to
observe primates in the wild, we must devise creative
ideas for how humans can live alongside other primates.
Primate cognitive study is probably the ﬁeld that has
made the greatest advances over the past two decades.
This is reﬂected in the eleven-chapter section, ‘‘Social
Behavior and Intelligence.’’ The theme of this section is
how primates manage to live in social groups. Topics
include how individuals cooperate, form alliances, and
resolve conﬂicts; how aggression is controlled; and how
the social fabric of a group is maintained. The presence
of reconciliation behavior is used as evidence of a sophisticated social awareness. Two chapters take tool use and
communication as bases for exploring cognitive ability in
primates. The evolution of tool-using behavior, especially
in light of recent archaeological studies at chimpanzee
nut-cracking sites in the Taı̈ forest, and the origin of language are considered. The ‘‘Social Beginnings’’ chapter
charts the social development of infant primates and
their interactions with adult group members. In addi-
THE SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF FUNERARY REMAINS. Edited
by Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel. Oxford:
Oxbow Books. 2006. 312 pp. ISBN 1-84217-211-7. $120.00
(hardcover).
The primary purpose of this volume is to address what
the editors refer to as a ‘‘distinct lack of synthetic treatment of human remains and their burial context’’ (p. ix)
in osteological analyses. They suggest that this is partly
a product of the postprocessual movement in archaeology
and that osteological analyses, along with other archaeological sciences, fell out of favor among social archaeologists. The basis for this issue notwithstanding, it is certainly true that osteological analyses have not always
addressed questions that are of fundamental interest
when studying human beings in the past.
The ﬁrst several papers in the volume present a series
of case studies that examine the contexts in which
human remains enter mortuary samples, including the
postmortem factors that affect preservation and recovery
tion, the extent to which variation in mothering style
inﬂuences the developing individual is entertained. The
question as to whether nonhuman primates are cultural
beings is addressed in another chapter. The underpinning problem is a lack of consensus on how to deﬁne culture and what aspects of behavior are indicative of cultural traditions. A chapter on primate self-medication
covers topics related to avoidance of disease transmission, consumption of plants known to have medicinal
properties, and the application of speciﬁc leaves or
insects to the body-behaviors thought to be directly
related to the well-being of individual primates. That
most of these behaviors appear premeditated may
explain why this chapter is included here rather than in
the ecology section. In the last chapter, the editors provide not only an overview of what we have accomplished
so far but also directions for the next couple of decades.
One recommendation to would-be primatologists is to
keep up the multidisciplinary approach that has yielded
such good results so far. They also suggest that more
general data should be collected on more species, since
so many are under direct threat of extinction.
The strength of this book is the very detailed information, including tables upon tables brimming with data,
provided in each chapter. The contents of this book
will provide an invaluable source of information to all
students of primatology, whether just starting out
or well established within the ﬁeld. In the end, Primates
in Perspective is a font of information, interesting to
read, and we now have a new primatology book to
treasure.
PIA NYSTROM
Department of Archaeology
University of Shefﬁeld
Shefﬁeld, UK
DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20788
Published online 6 February 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com).
and, therefore, ultimately inﬂuence the level of interpretation. Andrews and Bello address the issue of bone representation in two chapters: the ﬁrst, an illustration of
the utility of a variety of indices for understanding preservation and representation within osteological assemblages; the second, a more in-depth case study on Çatalhöyük, which explores the meaning of the spatial representation of differential bone preservation in differing
burial contexts. Similarly, Beckett and Robb’s chapter
reviews taphonomic processes through spatial analysis of
skeletal remains in sites from Neolithic Britain and Ireland. Of particular use to the regional specialist is an
extensive appendix of over 100 archaeological sites for
the period. Somewhat out of place in the book, but
nevertheless relevant to the broader discussion of postdepositional processes and human osteology, is Duday’s
chapter on the archaeology of death, translated from the
original French by one of the editors.
The bulk of the papers in this volume are osteological
studies that attempt to interpret the past more broadly
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
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BOOK REVIEWS
through inclusive analyses of burials’ archaeological contexts, including zooarchaeology, biochemical studies, the
archaeology of gender, and trauma. Of particular note
was the chapter by Gowland, which takes a very fundamental aspect of human osteological research, age estimation, and looks at age and aging in the past from
associated funerary evidence. This chapter, in particular,
provides an example of the kinds of analysis osteologists
should and can strive to attain. What better than age—
estimated foremost to understand other aspects of interpretation (demography, pathology, etc.)—to examine as
part of a broader reconstruction of the social aspects of
aging. Similarly, chapters by Sofar and Stone and Walrath provide gentle reminders of the distinction between
sex and gender in the bioarchaeological record. Although
often clearly denoted in introductory lectures as not
being the same thing, there has been a relative paucity
of osteological studies of gender per se, and these
papers are good illustrations of the potential of such
approaches. Additional chapters include examinations of
interpersonal violence, including domestic violence
(Novak), cannibalism (Knüsel and Outram), and body
modiﬁcations as representations of cultural identity
(Geller).
At a somewhat more theoretical level, but equally intriguing, is Knüsel’s chapter on the ‘‘investiture contest.’’
While I suspect that this level of reconstruction will be
seen as too ‘‘social’’ for many of today’s students, who are
drawn to the discipline by the evidentiary approach of
forensic anthropology, this and other chapters are excellent tools for training future skeletal biologists. It is a
small irony, likely not lost on the editors, that a volume
coming out of the United Kingdom, where anthropology
is more clearly distinguished from archaeology and physical anthropology than in North America, reminds us
that we are anthropologists ﬁrst. Although the study of
BOOKS RECEIVED
Abel EK (2007) Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclusion: A History of Public Health and Migration to Los
Angeles. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press. 188 pp. $23.95 (cloth).
Fennell CC (2007) Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and Ethnogenesis in the New World. Gainesville:
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George RM (2007) Facial Geometry: Graphic Facial
Analysis for Forensic Artists. Springﬁeld, IL: Charles
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Manual. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer. 233 pp. $39.95 (paper).
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Maestripieri D (2007) Macachiavellian Intelligence: How
Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the
World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 192 pp.
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American Journal of Physical Anthropology
human skeletal remains provides an important record of
human biological variation over time and through space,
it also provides us with a unique resource for understanding human behavior. Ultimately, human osteology
is about trying to understand human behavior in the
past. For the archaeologist, material culture is the data
to which such questions are addressed. For the osteologist, it is the biological remains of past people from
which interpretations are made. Of course, our understanding of the past is that much richer when all sources
of information are integrated.
Overall, the volume provides a very good assortment
of papers, many of which will stand on their own, particularly for a variety of topics at the graduate and senior undergraduate level. The book is not meant to be all
inclusive in its topical coverage of human osteology, but
it nonetheless provides a wealth of examples to illustrate the potential of broader analyses of burials or
funerary archaeology. The volume is an excellent reference for illustrating the strengths of osteological interpretation. This is particularly relevant today, when
there is increasing importance surrounding issues of the
analysis of human skeletal remains, repatriation, and
reburial.
ROBERT D. HOPPA
Department of Anthropology
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB, Canada
DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20807
Published online 6 February 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com).
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of Scaling: Physiological, Performance, Growth, Longevity and Ecological Ramiﬁcations. New York: Nova
Science Publishers. 381 pp. $89.00 (hardcover).
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Adaptations in Human Communities. New York:
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Stoinski TS, Steklis HD, and Mehlman PT (eds.) (2007)
Conservation in the 21st Century: Gorillas as a Case
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Turner A, and Antón M (2007) Evolving Eden: An Illustrated Guide to the Evoluton of the African Large
Mammal Fauna. New York: Columbia University
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DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20810
Published online 6 February 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com).